2030.  Vision or Nightmare?

This short/medium-range scenario has been produced for ColmarCo, by the UHA Scenarios and Strategies Think Tank [SSTT] by ‘pushing’ key trends and forecasts, introducing conceivable discontinuities coupled with some intuitive and creative synthesis.

The future in actuality when it ‘arrives’ will, of course be rather different – the value of this exercise is to test ability to plan a strategic and tactical response to a fast-changing business environment.  For ColmarCo it is very much a case of survival, make-or break: ça passe ou ça casse!

« The future will not only be stranger than you imagine – it will be stranger than you are capable of imagining. »               Arthur C Clarke  [Scientist and Science-Fiction writer]

Preamble

Nonetheless, decisions are being made everyday to devote substantial capital and other resources to the development of processes, products, projects and brands whose success will depend upon changes in conditions over time which are uncertain, but must be considered and evaluated.  It is generally accepted that those who try at least to project themselves into best-guesstimate futures seem to enhance their chances of survival.

Strategic planning – the design of a desired future and of ways in which to bring it about – ‘ends‘ and ‘means‘ if you like – cannot be achieved in a vacuum.  A ‘match’ must be found between the opportunities and threats presented by the business environment and the capabilities (the Strengths and Weaknesses portions of SWOT analysis) of the organisation.  This is not in any way an exact science since it is people – groups of individuals with different sets of skills, experiences, perspectives and values – who ‘read’ (analyse and intuitively assess) both the external and internal contexts, identify the options, select amongst them, design the appropriate planned response and implement and then review it.

Even though the process may be fraught with difficulty and imperfection, statistically it is those organisations that at least attempt it, which tend to outperform the competition in the longer term.  Paradoxically perhaps, the activity of planning is simultaneously exceptionally difficult but exceedingly vital.

It is hoped that this exercise will be interesting and will offer the all too rare opportunity for ColmarCo Divisional Managers to ‘look over the parapet’ and consider the future of the industry to which we are all committed in the light of a fast changing environment which in turn affects our activities as consumers and suppliers of tourism products and services..

For added reality, the perspective taken by the following scenario will be from the year 2030 looking back at the previous decade.

Political Unrest

Health, Technology,

& Sustainability:

THE

Driving Forces for Global and Regional Change

In the decade to 2030, some of the key impacts were

and in 2030 continue to be:-

• In developed economies cities began to de-populate as retention of high-cost office space became virtually pointless in the face of omnipresent, low-cost, home-based, high-bandwidth, super-fast (7G with 80% global coverage in 2029) Information and Communication Technology (ICT) links and the high economic and environmental cost of transport .    The ‘proof of the pudding‘ was CoVid and the ‘working from home‘ experience.  Employers simultaneously reduced costs whilst offering employees the attractive prospect of greater control over their working lives.  A ‘win-win’ situation accelerated the de-citification process. Whilst some employees took to the ‘home working’ opportunity to more effectively manage their ‘work-life balance’ and to ‘shield’ against CoVid, others worked longer hours to reward their employers for the (perceived) ‘perk’ of home working.  In both cases employer and employee costs fell – critical when, on the one hand, trying to compete with low-cost labor economies and on the other, trying to make a family income go further in the face of increasing costs of energy and staples. Business travel has reduced dramatically as a result as the environmental and economic costs of unnecessary travel are unacceptable.

• In one step, without second-hand, alternative technology or interim/staged development, less developed and undeveloped economies adopted  the very latest ICT directly as it was widely perceived as being the ‘last ticket on the very last train leaving the Third World‘ and became major competitors to the CoVid-blocked, energy-starved, war-worried, stagnating economies of the West.  A low-wage economy coupled with technological excellence saw new players rapidly join the world economic stage: much of South America, the Far East and the Indian subcontinent and principally, China . A clearer world economy had begun to emerge with a strong tendency toward the equalisation of world labour rates representing a stagnation and even lowering of rates of pay  and increasing unemployment rates in the West and Northern Hemisphere (stagnation & stagflation became byewords as early as 2025) and the opposite tendency in what were the low-wage economies of the late 20^th century.  Attractive growth rates and rates of return on investment are synonymous with the newer Second World economies which are relatively untouched by CoVid.  The ‘West’, as we knew it at the turn of the millennium, was and is, suffering widespread economic stagnation which is proving hard to accommodate politically. The world’s axis of power is moving steadily east towards China and India as North America’s and Europe’s economic and political power begins to wane. China’s economic power is enabling it to ‘cherry-pick’ the best products and brands as France soon dicovered early in the new century in the context of Chinese acquisition of its ‘classic’ wine estates and luxury brands.

•  The distribution and retailing/wholesaling systems changed almost overnight in most developed economies as 50% of all regular purchases (which became known as ‘Boring Shopping’ or BS) were made online from home in Western/Central Europe, the US, Japan and now China.  This was dramatically accelerated, again, by CoVid ‘drives’ and home delivery services: the massive profits made by Amazon and its clones in economies under CoVid being the ultimate proof that things were not going to go back to the way they were pre-CoVid.  BS  largely disappeared from these countries’ high streets by 2028. TESCO/ Carrefour, by 2027 the world’s 4th largest food retailer, closed over 60% of its superstores, massively expanding the scale and product ranges of the remaining MegaStores, thereby seeking to provide a more conducive ‘Retail Recreation’ environment therein.  Like other major retailers, the company invested in gigantic stock warehouses to be the hub of its ‘Direct Distribution’ network and in home delivery vehicle fleets (in partnership with a privatised La Poste in France and the Royal Mail in Britain) in response to the massive switch of consumer preference for having BS ordered online and delivered.   The high street was swept bare by the Retail Recreation Revolution (or 3R as it became known) as a natural counterpoint to BS; whereby, with BS consigned to the online world, 3R became an exclusively leisured and educational activity in which fulfilling and relaxed, enjoyable, mutual relationships between buyer and seller became the goal.
• The arrival of AI and its access to all online via Chat GPT / GPT4 programmes and the glabal installation of Google’s BARD within its browser in 2023 has led to an acceleration in just about everything related to the processing of information.  In 2030 its reliability and general acceptability have led to applications (almost unimaginable barely a decade ago) which have caused much in the way of positive benefits but has fuelled considerable corporate downsizing and rapidly-rising unemployment.  The educational sector (at university level particularly) fought against the onslaught of AI GPT, but has largely admitted ‘defeat’ and is having to rapidly reinvent itself, its role and purpose in terms of learning, teaching and assessment.  In 2030 the launch of OMNI: the ultimate knowledge and creative learning system is mounting a significant challenge to the existence of traditional teaching modes and institutions in the face of its self-styled OMNIpresence and OMNIscience and ultra-low cost.

• 10 consecutive years of highest summer temperatures and lowest rainfall on record between 2015 and 2025 across Europe with 100,000 dying of heatstroke / dehydration in the summer of 2024 and massive crop failures dramatically increasing the prices of almost all foodstuffs. Europe had particular difficulties with reacting to raw foodstuff shortages given that the Ukraine ‘breadbasket’ was still off limits and under-productive, Russia was not selling to Western markets and the USA had started to become more nationalistic reserving its crops for itself. Tourism to overheating riviera resorts with ‘soupy’ seas is declining and fast. The Northern coastlines of France and the Southern coastlines of Britain have successfully positioned themselves as the ‘New Riviera’.  Britain also became particularly attractive as the 2020 ‘Brexit’ turned out to be a national catastrophe for them as the Pound Sterling fell 30% upon the day of Brexit and has sunk further since…. an increase in international holidays taken on its shores proved no compensation in the face of a No-Deal Brexit in Jan 2021.  When the rain does arrive – it comes in short, sharp and massive bursts which wash away crops, cause dramatic property damage (as seen in the French Floods of 2019) and fail to fill up the reservoirs and aquifers (nappes phréatiques) as the water simply runs off and out to sea. [Writing this in December 2030 – the traditional French seasonal hosepipe bans  became all year round since 2026 and seem set to continue.]
• In 2025, incontrovertible research finally showed the rapid slow down of the so-called ‘Atlantic Conveyor’ – the Gulf Stream that ships warmer water into the North Atlantic and keeps North Western Europe warmer than it might otherwise be in winter.  Those old enough to remember the TV film series Game of Thrones  will recall the catchphrase ‘Winter is Coming‘, well winter most emphatically did come: the winters of 2023, 2024, 2025, 2027 and 2028 beating all records for snow and ice in north-western regions of Europe. Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, Portugal, the North Western coast of Spain and the Northern and Atlantic coasts of France ALL had very heavy snow and ultra-low temperatures in short, dramatic bursts but winters lasting nearly three weeks LESS than average..  Then Summer seemed to consistently arrive with barely a ‘Spring’.  The result is massive disruption to normality, species accelerating towards extinction as they cannot keep up with the speed of climate change and much reduced agricultural seasons as crop growing is squeezed between an all to brief a Spring and the ever earlier arrival of the now ‘usual’ summer heatwaves.  [Elizabeth Kolbert’s 2018 book ‘The Sixth Extinction‘ seems to be rapadly becoming prophetic.]
• Massive acceleration in the melting of the polar icecaps (Greenland is by 2029 almost completely green every summer and Iceland is currently jokingly debating whether to consider a new name – ‘Occasional Frostland’ ?).
• The release of icefield meltwater / freshwater into the world’s oceans, which is:
  • having a dramatic effect upon fish stocks, the levels of which are beginning to fall alarmingly.  The traditional British ‘Fish and Chip Shop’ on every corner has now almost entirely disappeared as fish is now priced as a luxury item few can afford (even on an island).
  • accelerating the slowing of the Atlantic Conveyor (see above)
• Grain yields in the Steppes of Russia and the Prairies of North America – the planet’s ‘breadbaskets‘ –  are also showing signs of falling consistently (see above). Another failure of the European harvest and world food production is in real trouble.  Alsace was in the news in 2024 as the fourth ‘canicule’ of the year entirely killed off the second Maize crop and put the livelihoods of 50% of farmers in jeopardy.

• Sea levels rose by far more than the predicted centimetre per year over the decade to 2030 –  this rate seems to be accelerating uncontrollably. Low-lying coastlines are becoming rapidly remodelled.  In the face of rising sea levels, spring tides and an August ‘Perfect Storm‘, the whole world watched in horror as the Paris Olympics were largely washed away in 2024 when the Seine went into the most dramatic and long-lasting flood the City’s historical records have ever seen.  Paris is not alone.  Projections suggest that without significant improvement to its barrier system, central London will have to expect catastrophic and uninsurable inundation at least once every year). There is ‘serious’ talk of moving the capital of England out of Thames-side London and to higher ground. Much of the Netherlands coastline is suffering a similar fate as maps are being rapidly re-drawn.  Coastal resorts are being battered around the world and finding it hard to maintain their infrastructure and most of all their beaches.  The Florida Keys have been officially ‘cast adrift’ (literally) by the American Administration in 2022 – frontline barriers and flood prevention schemes are seen as a pointless gesture against the inevitable.  Miami’s future is expected to go the same way by 2040… the rats are already leaving the sinking ship and property prices there fell by some 40% between 2025 and 2030. Bangladesh and Pakistan’s coastal plains are now facing up to being almost totally submerged for a significant portion of the year by 2035 and the World is being asked to help support the greatest diaspora in history: 70,000,000 / 100,000,000. But to where….exactly?

•  In the absence of (ex)President Trump who was not selected as the Republican candidate for the Presidency in 2023, the World finally managed to bring the USA, China, India (and even Australia) into the ‘fold’ to agree to introduce and rigorously enforce new policies to cut carbon emissions dramatically under the global ‘Put the Planet First’ campaign.  Sustainability / Carbon-Neutrality is now rapidly becoming the business mantra, yet even so, the calls for Sustainable Retreat from Development and ‘De-growth’ (décriossance) are growing. Given that early 21st Century statistics revealed that approximately 65% of all personal vehicle traffic movements were related to travelling to/from work and engaging in BS, the emergence of ICT, coupled with the global environmental and CoVid crises, provided the final justification and impetus in the Developed World for a fundamental volte-face in transport policy favouring public transport system provision and investment whilst levying heavy taxes on all personal vehicle ownership and use. This has resulted in (inter alia):

• Punitive taxation on private car ownership … (car ownership which in 2030 is being seen as elitist and highly anti-social).
• The banning of all ‘gas-guzzlers’, diesel engines and second car ownership happened in 2025 in the EU and in the USA.  Even hybrid and electric engines are considered a short transitional phase to Hydrogen or solar powered vehicles which all mainline manufcturers are racing to put in place to replace their production by 2035 at the very latest.  F1 has hydrogen power drives coming online in 2026.
• The growth of fuel efficient, low-emission, public transport: Hydrogen – powered or electric from renewable sources.
• Heavy (if not really punitive) taxation per seat-mile/kilometer on all flights internal or international. All airlines are to be forced to include carbon offsetting as compulsory in their ticket prices.  All airlines now also have to pay a substantial, standard, global tax on their fuel.  It has been agreed at UN level that this money will NOT go into state treasuries but to fund the newly created Global Sustainable Skies Imperative Fund to invest in projects both to reduce CO2 and Methane pollution into the atmosphere and to establish feasible and viable ways in which to sequester such greenhouse gasses.  The fund will also subsidise ‘clean’ and renewable energy projects in order to make fossil-fuel burning undesirable and non-economic.
• Market demand is beginning to focus on ‘Put the Planet First’ and manufacturers and suppliers are finally having to listen and gear up accordingly no matter what their product or service.  Luxury items that appear not to be putting the planet first are beginning to be stigmatised. Consumers are starting to ask where products come from, how they were transported, what the CO2 cost is.  Finding apples and onions from New Zealand or Argentina in European shops has become rare indeed.  ‘Buy home-produced: it’s Better  –  Buy locally-produced: it’s Best’ is a strapline being rapidly adopted by most nation states to serve the environment and preserve the local economy. The British WW2 ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign where families tried to use every square inch to grow fruit and veg is being re-born globally under the ‘Incredible Edible‘ slogan (Pam Warhurst, who started the initiative in a small town in the North of England has become a Dame of the British Empire and an Oscar-winner for her Incredible Edible Documentary: ‘If you eat, you’re in!’ and is now a globally recognised figure: a Greta Thunberg but at the other end of the age spectrum).  Self and community food production is becoming the norm now as the failures in the global agricultural and logistics systems require it.
• A classic battle is being fought out between the consumption-driving Marketing function, which has driven demand and fuelled economic growth & wealth since the Industrial Revolution by artificially creating and then satisfying ‘wants’, and the ‘Put the Planet First’ global-social [Glo-So] movement which points out most eloquently that the planet’s resources cannot sustain such ‘wants’ even in the short term for the rich minority, and that ‘meeting needs’ is more equitable and, even then, only barely within the planet’s sustainable resource ‘envelope’ given population forecasts.
• Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish Climate Activist, became  the world’s  youngest Prime Minister at the age of 27 in the Swedish elections in 2027, being carried to power upon a ‘Put the Planet First‘ agenda supported overwhelmingly by young and old alike.  Those who laughed in 2018 at her ‘one schoolgirl protest‘ in front of her country’s Parliament are beginning to realise the error of their ways.  Her ‘How Dare you!‘ speech to President Trump and world politicians has now entered into folklore. She has found a way of bringing together left and right alike to fight a battle that runs across, over, beyond and through all political lines.  It seems likely that a similar approach will be taken by many countries and politicians positioning themselves for power with environment (rather than merely economy) at the core.

Ironically, despite the unifying message of ‘Put the Planet First’, unrest in the world is growing.  Despite the urgings of the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, the gap between the rich and poor is still increasing and as a result the world seems more polarised than ever. The Three Worlds are never more clear:

• The First World (The [North] West), has had to get used to falling growth rates, increasing unemployment and lower rates of pay (courtesy of globalisation, CoVid and the migration of jobs to developing economies with lower wage structures) at just the time when ‘Put the Planet First’ is requiring gigantic new expenditures equivalent to typical National Defence or Health/Welfare budgets. Overseas Development and Aid budgets have been slashed to cover the problems ‘at home‘ and trading blocks have become more protectionist and inward looking.  The West fears the closure of the gap by Second World countries and the loss of its competitive position and pre-eminence globally. The economy is also increasingly burdened by pension and welfare costs as society lives longer and the rising healthcare and insurance costs necessitated by climate change.  If there is any ‘silver lining‘ in this ‘cloud’, it is that unemployment is being mopped up by the massive investments going into the research and development of sustainable products, services and energy systems.
• The Second World (Rapidly developing, formerly Third World countries, like India, China, the Tiger Economies of the Far East and some of South America) has rapidly industrialised using its own resources plus ultra-efficient new technologies.  Work has flooded from the First World to these nations spurred on by low labour costs.  Some of these nations are also positive beneficiaries of climate change.
• The Third World is being left behind even further: the Second World has grown away from it and the First World is focusing its attention and its own resources closer to home.  The opportunity to develop is even more remote as it’s aid receipts have fallen as a result of the crisis in the West, the Second World is too lean a player to compete with and the Third World nations are actively prevented from using old, cheaper, fuel- inefficient systems by the global environmental crisis.

In the light of the above, the mission of the UN has become clearer to all: to keep the peace so that the world can concentrate on managing the environmental battle it has on its hands rather than a war over resources as basic as water and raw foodstuffs.  War is simply too energy-hungry and pollution-producing to be permitted.  However, the UN’s ability to achieve this is undermined by its falling revenues as the First World suffers.  Unrest comes in FIVE forms:

• The First World fighting the loss of its preeminence political and economic
• The Second World resenting the First World’s protectionism and outperforming the First World
• The Third World desperately trying to find a way forward without much help and looking for more ‘aggressive’ means to draw attention to its plight.  Gandhi-like marches of millions towards national borders seeking the very basic necessities of survival are now commonplace.  ‘Walking for Water’  / ‘Fighting for Food’ slogans & banners are icons to shame the global conscience of the developed economies who still seem to find it preferable to build costly walls (which will inevitably fail) rather than to share their resources.
• The misuse of the power held by global energy suppliers and energy control / disruption as the obvious target for terrorists
• The extreme and uneven impacts of climate change which often seem to penalise those who are already in the most precarious of positions.

State support for Higher Education and access thereto was increased throughout the world, in the East to support the acclimatisation to the technical skill requirements of ICT and in the West primarily to ease societal tensions and create a sense of unity of purpose, or more crudely, to make those largely unemployed feel in some way productive members of society. We now speak of ‘Lifelong Learning’ as some citizens may never actually have ‘careers’ or perhaps even ‘work.

Major global decrees and edicts have been introduced and enforced by governments and religious bodies alike.    For example, the UN has finally decreed that ‘Programmed Obsolescence is now Obsolete’. Products have to be long-life (preferably life-long) or they will not be permitted to see the light of day.  Fashion and especially Fast Fashion, as the enemies of longevity / sustainability have been banned in most countries.  ‘Repair Cafés’ now exist in virtually all communities.

The role of ‘Sustainability Ambassador’ has been introduced in most nation states and imposed upon their corporations and organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors. All companies with 10 or more employees MUST have an individual responsible to the company, its stakeholders and wider society for the sustainability of the business.  Such performance is rigorously reviewed.  ‘Greenwashing’ is outlawed and heavily punished.  Zero Waste Home has also spawned the Zero Waste Work movement.

Governments have finally ‘switched on’ to the necessity of using ‘carrots and sticks‘ and what the French are prone to call ‘Bonus-Malus‘ (and the rest of us might think of as being rather like ‘Robin Hood‘):

• ‘carrots‘ – subsidies and other forms of encouragements to persuade businesses and its citizens to ‘do the right thing’ by the environment and stay within sustainability targets.
• ‘sticks‘ – laws, regulations, charters and codes of practice which are rigorously enforced and contravention penalised with significant fines or imprisonment.  Such ‘sticks‘ need to be applied if people are not responding sufficiently or quickly enough to the ‘carrots‘.
• ‘Bonus-Malus‘ is effectively taking the money raised from fines imposed upon people or businesses contravening the regulations (the ‘Malus‘) and redirecting such funding to stimulate, encourage, accelerate and invest in new sustainability initiatives (the ‘Bonus‘.)  In 2026 in Europe we saw a massive rise in the employment of factory/business inspectors (paid for by a small fraction of the ‘Malus‘ incomes) to impose punitive fines plus the emergeance of a set of ‘Sustainability Bounty-Hunters‘: vigilante whistleblowers who will receive payment for information regarding corporate non-compliance with sustainability regulations which leads to a fine / conviction.  Although this is getting some negative press, as it appears to be working, governments are prepared to ‘turn a blind eye’ to it as the world can no longer afford anti-sustainability practices.

In the First World, as incomes begin to plateau and fall back, taxation increases to deal with environmental issues, unemployment grows slowly – alternative jobs in sustainability are not forecast to significantly offset and reduce unemployment until at least 2036 –  and non-sustainable energy costs rise. Result: unemployment increases and disposable incomes fall.  Tourism is now being widely seen as a luxury item and is therefore a prime candidate for cutback by those hardest hit (most CoVid-hit economies) .  However, in a more austere and pressurised world, consumers continue to hold on tight to the possibility of ‘escape’ from the daily grind to actually see and experience the planet they are trying to save.  That said, travel and transport costs, in particular, are a worry for the consumer: the further the distance – the greater the cost.  Tourism in 2030 is becoming a luxury which only the rich élite can afford and enjoy.

‘Leisure’ (the current euphemism for uneployment) has become a permanent way of life for a significant portion of the world’s population. Other than Sustainability & Environment, the key political issue has become the redistribution of the economic product of labour between those who work and those who, through no fault of their own, cannot do so.  This issue is particularly vexed in the First World where fewer are in work and are earning less but are asked also to shoulder the massively increased burden of the longer-living, non-working portion of society.  Jobs in most cases are now shared and in many nations legislation has been enacted to institute a 30 hours per week ceiling on individual paid work.  Break-taking of an absolute minimum of 8 weeks a year is enforced with an almost religious zeal.  Such measures are being introduced to reduce the tension in societies and promote a feeling of equality of access to work and thus family income.  Social Tourism has been reinvented in a big way.

• ‘In-Home Leisure’ (and work) increased dramatically as populations began to explore almost infinite information availability.  The combination of almost omnipresent home-based ICT in the First and Second Worlds with the rapid advances in speech recognition (which dramatically replaced the keyboard as the standard input device by 2027) represented a quantum leap in ICT adoption. VHS, cassettes, CDs, DVDs and most brochures became redundant memorabilia of a pre-ICT age: everything exists ‘on the cloud’.  Books and newspapers, once considered immune from the challenge of ICT, now find themselves currently under threat of capitulation to the new technologies (largely because of their energy and resource costs in production and distribution).  This has resulted in a significant overall decline in day visits and short breaks in particular, and even the Visiting Friends and Relatives market has begun to be hit by the online ‘MEnU’ (me & you – Zoom-restyled) facility which allows multiple and simultaneous face to face meetings to take place via the screen (in 90% of the developed world’s homes and businesses and their mobile phones by 2022).  For the same reason, business tourism saw a dramatic overall reduction in volume worldwide: it reduces direct financial costs significantly without impairing organisational effectiveness and enables saved time to be productively reinvested. Incentive-based business tourism is however growing dramatically as it has a ‘cachet’ (one can get through work something one could never afford personally).

• The Eastern European, New Accession countries of the EU became progressively more attractive as tourism destinations and generating markets until the Russian War in Ukraine.  The same is true of  Second World countries – by 2030 China has long since passed France as the World’s No1 Tourism Destination (2025). Whereas traditional ‘long-haul’ destinations had become prohibitively expensive for all but the top 25% of earners by 2023, short-haul alternatives with lower seat-mile tax remained popular despite rising costs related to fuel taxes and carbon offsetting becoming mandatory.

•  Faced with an aging and expiring market, higher overheads, the cut-throat pricing of the multiples and online low-cost operators, independent High Street travel agents were all but wiped out by 2025.  Those that remain have become Travel Consultants’ serving small, highly-specialised, nîche markets and charging significantly for their services.

• Overall, Travel and Tourism are not what they once were: the global market has ‘shrunk’. Though there are still significant opportunities and fortunes to be made,  the threats to traditional business are considerable.  All Tourism businesses need to rigorously and continuously  analyse and evaluate their products and services in the light of these trends and projections – even to the point of daring to think the unthinkable: should we stay in this market, or indeed in this business?

Conclusion.

The world has changed over the last decade and is set to change even more dramatically and much faster and more unpredictability than is generally thought in the decade to come.  Planning longer-term investment is becoming that much more difficult as it is becoming difficult to see beyond even relatively short horizons.  Much of the Think Tank’s Scenario 2030+ has been developed by ‘pushing’ trends which are visible currently or are emerging.  However, one cannot rule out major ‘discontinuities’ – events which are unpredictable but significant enough to affect the current ‘status quo’.  No-one foresaw the Jan 2020 Corona virus or the Russian War in Ukraine in 2022, but in by the end of that year there was barely a community on the surface of the planet that had not felt its scourge.

One might imagine some further such discontinuities which are impossible to predict with any relaibility, even if the chances of them happening at some point in the near future are quite high:

• The San Andreas fault finally releases its pent-up energies and slides LA and San Fransico and much of western California into the sea.
• The massive hot magma ocean close to the surface under Yellowstone National Park erupts in a supervolcano that covers most of the USA and southern Canada under metres of ash. Production, agriculture and energy systems are decimated.
• For the sake of the environment, the world’s superpowers cease all nuclear weapon production and dismantle the existing arsenal to lessen the risk.  A ‘rogue state’ or terrorist organisation might, however, see advantage to deployment of nuclear arms
• The increased rate of melting of the permafrost caused by global temperatures releases unknown viruses and bacteria to which humanity is slow to respond – a major global pandemic /die-back ensues before an anti-dote can be found.  The Corona virus could have become this had not a vaccination been found in time.
• A new world-changing technolgy emerges (just think how the internet/www has changed our lives and business since the early 1990s)…
• The US Navy’s undercover research into Fleischmann and Pons’ ‘Cold Nuclear Fusion‘ experiments proves with certainty that an energy production system built upon it will be both cheap, efficient and without environmental risk. With little time remaining for the world to change its energy systems to save the planet, by a narrow vote, America determines to freely give the design to the world…..
• The Earth’s magnetic fields reverse suddenly (it has happened frequently before) or a major solar flare occurs, rendering all our satellites and GPS inoperative and frying the world’s data  storage and everything that depends upon it.
• The world’s top 100 (largest / most profitable) companies join forces to create a global entity (‘empire?’) that they might call ‘World Wide Wealth’, whose powers and finances eclipse those of nation states (even most nation states together).  They no longer consider themselves subject to national or international law.
• Agricultural powerhouse companies succeed in patenting all high-yield, hybrid seeds (which have to be purchased each year as they are sterile) and having the use of ‘natural’ self-replicating seed outlawed (as being insufficiently productive to meet the planet’s population’s needs). Our food chain would become effectively owned by a very small number of corporations.

 Perceptive performers predict and plan ….

Poorer planners post poorer profits….

 ______________________________________________________________

Memo:

From:             ColmarCO Chief Executive’s Office

To:      Directors of Divisions and Heads of Brands

Re:      Scenario Planning

Above you will see the scenario commissioned from UHA for the next 5/6 years and beyond.   This may seem extreme to you, but may I remind you that over the last 20 years matters/events like:

• The end of the Cold War / fall of the Berlin Wall and accession of Eastern Bloc states to the EU
• The dramatic disappearance of the ice-cap and the clarity of the evidence of the effect of human activity upon global warming: the Anthropocene.
• The rapid economic growth and power of China and the fall of the USA as the de-facto major superpower in the world.  Britain deciding to exit the european and world economic stage for a footmark note in world history.
• The internet as a global communication and business platform. GPS. tablets and smart-phones.
• 9/11 and new forms of war / terrorism
• GMOs
• DNA unravelling and gene sequencing
• Private space ventures… plans for Moon based colonies and human Mars landings
• hybrid, electric, solar and hydrogen cell-powered vehicles

all seemed pretty impossible/improbable to those looking forward just a few years before such events happened. We are now living with the reality of these things.

I take the view that the UHA Scenario has at its core some trends which will inevitably impact dramatically upon us and some intuitive projections and  discontinuities (one-off events) which, although they may not happen, will be of the type of things which will almost certainly happen.  Accordingly I consider this Scenario to be a good device against which to test our ability to plan proactive ColmarCo responses to events.  Even if such things do not happen, others will, and the activity of rehearsing options for strategic change will stand us in good stead.

It would be all too easy for me to instruct each Divisional Director to prepare his own divisional Strategic Response to Scenario 2025, but I fear that this would have the following disadvantages:

• Divisional Directors are inevitably ‘inside their own (divisional) boxes’ and may simply not see the emerging opportunities and threats or the best means of responding to them.
• The natural tendency to unquestioningly defend the ‘status quo’ / divisional ‘empire’ at all costs when this may be entirely inappropriate from a wider, corporate and stakeholder point of view.
• It would neglect any sense of an integrated, ColmarCo ‘vision’ emerging.

We will proceed as follows:   TWO teams drawn from the senior management of all our divisions will work in parallel (but separately) in order to produce TWO holistic ColmarCo strategies entitled:  ColmarCo: Towards 2030+.  I feel that the different interpretations and resulting ideas & visions emerging from the respective teams may help produce a better definitive strategy as a result. In your teams you are to proceed as follows:-

1. Consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of the ColmarCo brands (pre 2030 scenario) on the basis of the performance data provided.

2. Brainstorm the Threats to the company emerging from / implied by the scenario and how and to what extent they are likely to affect ColmarCo financial performance (if no strategic changes are made to the company’s operations: this is called a ‘Reference Projection’. Project forward for 5 to 10  years.   Consider ways of neutralising the threats.

3. Brainstorm the Potential Opportunities for ColmarCo’s existing brands and operations (and for new ones) arising from the scenario and consider their relative values (ie which do you feel offer the biggest possibilities for the company and why).

4. In the light of the above evaluations of opportunities and threats, consider the possible strategic options available to the Company and evaluate them in terms of issues such as: degree of risk, level of capital requirement, likely returns (profitability).

5. Prepare a ColmarCo 2030+ Vision for presentation to the Company clearly explaining and justifying WHERE the company is going and HOW it is going to get there.  A critical part of this will be a timeline explaining what the company wll be doing in the immediate / short / medium and long term.  Important Qs will be where will we be established (regions/countries/markets) and where will the majority of our profits be comeing from as compared with today.

6. Present your 2030 Vision to the other group (inc a 2 x page Executive Summary – if we have time)

7. Consider together the respective merits of your strategies. Make a Master Strategy from the best of both.

Dare to believe you can do it!

T